Projects & Impact

AHP has built its business on applying best practices, many of which we have helped to shape, and real-world, hands-on knowledge to improving systems and business practices for our clients.

In all of the work that we do, we are guided by our mission to improve health and human services systems of care and business operations to help organizations and individuals reach their full potential.

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AHP has been running this federal grant from SAMHSA since 2010. It is a program designed to give people with substance use disorders wider access to community services that help them on their road to recovery. Clients choose recovery support services they think will help them most in their recovery by using vouchers they are given to secure these services. Examples of services include: care coordination, basic critical needs support (clothing, IDs), public transportation passes, health and mental health supports and employment training. ATR gives participants the dignity of self-sufficiency and the hope for a future in recovery.

This project is being implemented in the Greater Springfield and Greater Boston areas and has recently expanded to Worcester and New Bedford, when ATR was rolled under the Commonwealth’s STR (State Targeted Response to the Opioid Epidemic) grant. AHP’s accomplishments in this contract are summarized below.

For the relatively low cost of an average of $1,865 per participant for the 6-month program, ATR saves the Commonwealth money and saves lives. During one grant year alone, $4 million went back into the local economy by paying providers for the services they provided to the participants and by paying participants a work-study benefit when they attended job training programs.

Key to the tremendous success of ATR is the focus on employment through job readiness training, job search assistance, and occupational training. Job training is provided to participants with a recognition that they have complex needs and benefit from customized approaches to employment training. The ATR employment program, called the Career Building Initiative (CBI) is a national model for successful job readiness and occupational training for people in early recovery from substance use disorders.

AHP developed a provider network to deliver services grounded in principles of recovery.

ATR allows for a client-driven approach to care through a collaborative and continuous recovery planning with the help of an ATR care coordinator.

ATR coordinators are continuously trained on recovery planning, motivational interviewing, and engagement techniques, resulting in successful engagement with the participants throughout their time in the program.

Impact:
Since the grant began in 2010, ATR has provided services to over 16,000 individuals in Massachusetts. Participants in the 6-month ATR program have very low rates of overdose deaths (less than 1%), low rates of new arrests, along with the following positive, statistically significant improvements:

Increased employment or school enrollment (+188 percent)

Increase in stable housing (+152 percent)

Increased abstinence from alcohol and other drugs (+5 percent)

Substantially increased wages and a decreased reliance on public assistance

Decreased numbers of people going back to jail/prison

For participants of one or more of ATR’s 20 employment training programs through the Career Building Initiative (CBI), the increase in the proportion of participants who were employed or enrolled in school after participation in ATR was even greater.

Detroit Wayne County Community Mental Health Agency (D-WCCMHA) engaged AHP in 2006 to provide and coordinate technical assistance and evaluation services for eight community mental health centers that received new funding to develop and operate supportive housing and supported employment initiatives. AHP helped implement these Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) evidence-based practices (EBPs) to fidelity, together with ensuring the client and its stakeholders had access to timely and ongoing information on program performance.

Work occurred over many years (from 2006 through 2015) and involved many tasks and elements. Following are highlights of some of this work:

2006–2011: AHP defined and developed a sustainable strategy to implement supported employment and housing initiatives. It also developed guidelines to assist providers in implementing these practices. AHP senior staff facilitated numerous onsite strategic planning and operations management sessions for executive leadership of the nine agencies in the initiative. Other work during this time included:

Development of bi-annual fidelity assessments of supported employment and supportive housing models implemented by provider agencies;

Redesign of outcomes evaluation to facilitate performance monitoring along with providing technical assistance in the form of training development and implementation;

Performance of an overhaul of existing quantitative consumer-level evaluation data, working closely with a local evaluator and project stakeholders. The new system led to a marked increase in provider program engagement that allowed delivery of monthly performance data for eight providers serving 200 active consumers; and

Planning and implementation of nine site visits to evaluate provider agencies on an annual basis.

2012-2013: AHP worked together with a planning team to design curriculum and develop priority messaging. AHP gathered feedback on draft materials that resulted in development and implementation of a two-day onsite GOI training session, as well as two new online training courses, including:

Critical Time Intervention (CTI) and Permanent Supportive Housing; and

General Organizational Index (GOI) and Permanent Supportive Housing.

In addition, AHP implemented a plan to gather service use data for both supportive housing and employment consumers that expanded descriptive information on consumers served. This data demonstrated a reduction in costly inpatient and crisis-related service use following supported employment and supportive housing program enrollment.

Impact:
Over nine years AHP had a great impact on the Detroit Wayne County community mental health centers. Among key impacts were the development of a new data system that led to a marked increase in provider program engagement, and which allowed delivery of monthly performance data for eight providers serving 200 active consumers; and a demonstrated reduction in costly inpatient and crisis-related service use following supported employment and supportive housing program enrollment.